Talk:Anactoria

This should just mention Sappho and Algy, and the poem might go at Wikisource. I'm tagging it because I'm in the middle of something else and might forget this. —JerryFriedman 04:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

{{Template:Did you know nominations/Anactoria}}

Thanks for your note, {{u|UndercoverClassicist}}. Three immediate thoughts from me; I'll give the article a proper read over if I get a minute:

• {{tq|Anactoria also appears in fragment 141, where Sappho writes to another of her female companions, Atthis, saying that Anactoria still "thinks of [Sappho] constantly" despite living away in the city of Sardis}}. This is fragment 141 in Barnstone's Greek Lyric, which is Sappho 96 in the standard numeration. And I'm pretty sure that the mention of Anactoria in it derives from JM Edmonds' wild speculation rather than anything in the Greek – none of the modern translations have it (including Barnstone's more recent translations).
• I see: I've clarified the numbering and slightly weakened the phrasing, following the footnote in an updated edition of Barnstone. Do you think that's enough? It doesn't seem like wild speculation there (that the unnamed "she" is in Sardis, Anaktoria was in Sardis, so the unnamed "she" may/should be Anaktoria"), but then I'm only just coming to the problem with very little reading on it. Do you know of anyone blaming Edmonds for this in print? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
• I've had a look through my usual sources and I can't find much explicitly discussing the suggestion that the girl in Sardis in Sappho 96 is Anactoria; the closest is in Denys Page's Sappho and Alcaeus (p.93): {{tq|To these and certain other speculations, it is sufficient to reply that they find no support in Sappho's words}}; a footnote to "speculations" reads {{tq|Lavagnini ... names the absent girl 'Anactoria', and actually sends her to join the harem of Alyattes at the court of Sardis}}. More recent commentators on the poem just don't mention the possibility at all, and pretty universally refer to her as simply "a girl" or "a woman". A couple (Burnett, Three Archaic Poets p.302 n.65 and Hutchinson, Greek Lyric Poetry p.179) discuss the possibility that the girl is called Arignota/Arignote. {{br}} As for Sardis, I think Barnstone's argument that {{tq|'she' is Anaktoria because she was away in Sardis}} is circular; AFAIK the only connection between Sardis and Anactoria is his assumption that the woman in Sardis in Sappho 96 is Anactoria. The testimonia associate her only with Miletus (at least assuming she is Suda's "Anagora"); the only other reference to Sardis in Sappho is the headband she can't give her daughter in fr.98. There is I guess a very tenuous argument to be made that the reason Sappho refers to the {{tq|war-chariots of Lydia}} in fr. 16 is because Anactoria is associated with Lydia, but again there's no actual textual evidence.{{br}}All this is to say that the current text isn't actively {{em|wrong}} – there's no evidence that Anactoria {{em|isn't}} the unnamed woman of Sappho 96 – and Barnstone is a reasonably well-regarded translator so in an article which is already as light on detail as this one is I guess it's worth mentioning the possibility, but I would be inclined to be even less committal than the current text and explicitly attribute this to Barnstone. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
• :Agreed -- will tone it down even more to "has been speculated". I don't suppose you could find the citation for Lavagnini, as referenced in Page? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
• ::Page gives "Lavagnini, Aglaia pp.139f." Looks to be [https://openlibrary.org/books/OL19751504M/Aglaia this], but it's not available through archive.org or google books for me. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:23, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
• :::Brilliant: thanks. Will try to track down: if not, can always do "Page, citing Lavagnini". UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:59, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
• ::::OK, I think I've got something here: moved the fr. 141 material down below the "Ode to Anactoria" and made clearer that this is speculation: I've cribbed the notes you very helpfully provided above into an efn. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:56, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
• {{tq|She is mentioned, among other pupils of Sappho's, in fragmentary works by Damophyla of Pamphylia}}. Robinson, who is the source for this claim, certainly seems to say this, but he's either confused or writing unclearly: the "her own fragments mention Anactoria ..." in the source must refer to Sappho's fragments; nothing of Damophyla's work survives. I checked I.M. Plant's anthology Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome and he explicitly says that there are no fragments of Damophyla.
• Oh dear -- axed the sentence. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
• {{tq|the poem's first line is "My life is bitter with thy love", translated from fragment 130}} I'm not sure I'd really call this "translated from" Sappho 130 ("Eros melter of limbs (now again) stirs me— / sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in" in Carson's translation) so much as alluding to or being inspired by it.
• Now "which alludes to". UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:46, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

: Thanks for these, Caeciliusinhorto. Replies above: I think I've managed to sort them, though perhaps I'm still being too bullish on frag 96/141. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:46, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

::May I check that [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anactoria&diff=1249528315&oldid=1249496592 this correction] is what you were planning to write? I can drop in an advertisment for this script which makes it easy to spot errors with the {{tl|harv}}/{{tl|sfn}} family of citation templates. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 11:43, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

:::Oops -- yes, you are quite right! Well spotted and thank you for fixing. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 12:40, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

This article currently includes the full text of Sappho 16 as translated by Diane Rayor. This translation is from 2014 and is therefore copyrighted. Under the WP:NFC policy, it would probably be okay to include the full translation in the article Sappho 16; however, its use should be limited to that article. This has been discussed in the FAC review, but I disagree that the full poem should be included; it would make more sense to move the translated poem to the article about the poem itself. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 03:38, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:Including a single poem from a large collection is textbook fair use, and agreed (both on Wikipedia and in the courts) to meet the WP:NFCC criterion of "minimal usage". As you note, this was discussed at FAC and consensus established for the current approach. In this particular article, there's a strong encyclopaedic value argument, as a) the entire poem concerns Anactoria, b) is discussed in the article text, and c) it is the only text that gives us anything close to "reliable" biographical information. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:17, 28 February 2025 (UTC)